By Dennis Byrne
Human Events
Is it possible that the next U.S. senator from the persistently blue state of Illinois could be a Republican?
It’s not out of the question, thanks to the state’s current monumental political scandal -- the arrest of its sitting Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, for allegedly trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat and assorted other shakedowns.
Of course, the only chance of a Republican succeeding Obama is if the state Legislature decides to take the power to fill an empty Senate seat away from the governor, and call a special election. At this moment, a tide is growing among state legislators to do just that.
Blagojevich, if true to form, could try to stymie that plan by sitting on the legislation for 60 days before letting it become law -- enough time to throw a wrench into the works by unacceptably delaying the primary and general election into mid-2009. He also could try to use his amendatory veto to insert unacceptable provisions, such as pushing back the date of the election.
If the Legislature manages to take away his power to appoint, there may be no better Republican candidate than the unheralded hero of the Blagojevich scandal: the former Republican senator from Illinois, Peter Fitzgerald.
Credit rightfully is being heaped on the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation), for running the investigation that led to Blagojevich’s arrest. But if it weren’t for Peter Fitzgerald -- who preceded Obama in the state’s junior senator’s seat -- there would never have been a Patrick Fitzgerald here who has done such a marvelous job of rooting out corruption.
Read more in Human Events
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